Blackwood, Scott

Lively and informative, this book will appeal beyond lovers of these musical genres.

Similar on the surface to Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, this lyrical, abstract, and less sentimental novel by Blackwood (We Agreed to Meet Just Here; In the Shadow of Our House) about murdered teenage girls observing the living will probably not appeal to as wide an audience but may haunt literary fiction readers long after the unsettling ending. [One of Barbara Hoffert's "Writers To Watch," Prepub Alert, 7/14/14.]